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FLStudio, music studio programs, advice(?)

Sorry guys, I'm not sure what to toss into the OP, so have some wikipedia:

FL Studio is a pattern-based music sequencer, which allows the artist to create songs in pieces (patterns) using the Step Sequencer and the Piano Roll view, then merge those pieces together using the Playlist window. The Effects Panel provides access to a wide range of software effects that can be automated for dynamic sweeps, rolling bass lines and texture changes.

The program is especially well known within the hobbyist music community as a relatively low-cost, user-friendly platform for the creation of hip hop, electronica and dance music, although the complete version contains a sufficient amount of features for handling the production of songs in many different genres.

Image-Line Software changed the name from Fruityloops to FL Studio in 2002. According to the FAQ section on their website, the reasons were avoiding potentional trademark infringment issues with Kelloggs (over their breakfast cereal product named Froot Loops), word "fruity" having a colloquial meaning of "gay" to a lot of (US based) users, and an association of the term "loops" with making music using only pre-canned loops (while FL Studio has changed to faciliate the whole music creation process since the first versions).

This is probably my third thread or so on FLStudio, which is a bit silly. The reason I made this is that I'm looking for someone who knows how to use FLStudio well and could give me some advice to making things simply sound better. I've been toying around with it for maybe a year now, probably less. However, I'm still not content with what I'm able to create and feel that I'm missing some very basic things.

Links to video tutorials welcome, and please send me a message on AIM if you would be willing to help out; I'd rather not post stuff in here due to the poor quality of it.

I have Audacity, but the most it does for me is help me rip game music and youtube stuff to mp3 formats for listening easier. As of right now, the only things I use are sound samples I have, and the synths that come with FLStudio. No instruments, no previous musical abilities or learning, nothin'. So, I've got a bit of work ahead of me as far as learning.

Audacity is an audio editor, and won't help with the two basic fundamentals of shitty music. Namely, that there are two things that no program will ever fix. One, shitty sounds will sound shitty. Two, some people just suck at making music, and need to either give up or work very hard to get to a point where they're happy with what they're making.

Kaseius, this is more H/A stuff than G&T, but whatev. You've accomplished one thing that many music amateurs don't learn for years, and you should be proud of that. Namely, that the stuff you make when you're just starting out is going to really suck, and could potentially kill people with its awfulness. But it's a fact of life, and many people (as evidenced by MySpace) never realize that they're making horrible music, and will continue to churn out horrible music with no ear for quality whatsoever. So you should be happy that you at least realize that something you're doing is creating something of lower quality than you would appreciate, and that you would like to work to fix it.

FLStudio, like most sequencers, lets you create music in a wide variety of ways. Before it was Studio it was Fruity Loops and it really emphasized non-linear pattern-based MIDI sequencing, and it's kept that to some degree. Understanding how different music apps fundamentally approach music making is key to really wrapping your brain around how they work and how YOU work.

How do you currently make music? If you really want to get in-depth and specific, you can PM me and we can talk about it over email or something (not IM, as I do have a job and life ), but you'd likely get plenty of advice from people here as well as far as where to find sounds, what programs are good as samplers or synthesizers, and general music advice. I've spent the last 10 years of my life kind of aimlessly messing with music, sometimes creating things but generally trying to find a workflow that works for me. I'm not at all interested in making a band and rocking out; I'm also not interested in solo digital audio wankery. But FLStudio can't just make your music better, you need to outline more of how you use it and what you're doing in order to create it.

So how do you sequence, come up with ideas, listen to music, and all that? Software is just the manipulator, the thing that makes it tangible.

Agreed, although I felt that G&T would be a better choice due to the higher traffic. Feel free to move it, mods, if you like.

Pretty much, I start by just trying to find a kick and hat pattern that sounds half decent and work my way from there with trying to find a good synth and bass sound to go with it. Another problem is that I don't have any keyboard to play around on.

One of the big problems I have is that it always feels like there's something missing that would help out the overall sound but I can't figure out what it is. I'll upload my newest monstrosity and PM it to you, Eggy. Perhaps you can tell me what it is I'm missing.

www.youtube.com/user/kaseius -- Let's Plays

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DarmakIf someone is reading this...I must have failed.Registered Userregular

Audacity is an audio editor, and won't help with the two basic fundamentals of shitty music. Namely, that there are two things that no program will ever fix. One, shitty sounds will sound shitty. Two, some people just suck at making music, and need to either give up or work very hard to get to a point where they're happy with what they're making.

Kaseius, this is more H/A stuff than G&T, but whatev. You've accomplished one thing that many music amateurs don't learn for years, and you should be proud of that. Namely, that the stuff you make when you're just starting out is going to really suck, and could potentially kill people with its awfulness. But it's a fact of life, and many people (as evidenced by MySpace) never realize that they're making horrible music, and will continue to churn out horrible music with no ear for quality whatsoever. So you should be happy that you at least realize that something you're doing is creating something of lower quality than you would appreciate, and that you would like to work to fix it.

FLStudio, like most sequencers, lets you create music in a wide variety of ways. Before it was Studio it was Fruity Loops and it really emphasized non-linear pattern-based MIDI sequencing, and it's kept that to some degree. Understanding how different music apps fundamentally approach music making is key to really wrapping your brain around how they work and how YOU work.

How do you currently make music? If you really want to get in-depth and specific, you can PM me and we can talk about it over email or something (not IM, as I do have a job and life ), but you'd likely get plenty of advice from people here as well as far as where to find sounds, what programs are good as samplers or synthesizers, and general music advice. I've spent the last 10 years of my life kind of aimlessly messing with music, sometimes creating things but generally trying to find a workflow that works for me. I'm not at all interested in making a band and rocking out; I'm also not interested in solo digital audio wankery. But FLStudio can't just make your music better, you need to outline more of how you use it and what you're doing in order to create it.

So how do you sequence, come up with ideas, listen to music, and all that? Software is just the manipulator, the thing that makes it tangible.

Your post makes a lot of sense to me, and you seem to really know what you're talking about. I used to mess around with Fruity Loops back in the day, though since I didn't really have a huge interest in actually making music I didn't try and really learn the program and hence everything I made sounded like shit. But it was fun to make, I enjoyed the entire learning and music making process. Man, I'm just rambling now, I don't know if this post even had a point to it.

If anyone wants a good laugh, earbleed, or would like to give a shot at helping, toss me a PM or something please.

And Darmak, it's the same way for me. I really, really enjoyed the MTV Music Generator demo when I was younger, and I love music, so I want to give it a shot at making something. Just plain dicking around with it is enjoyable, even if you don't have much musical talent.

I've tried the demo of both that and Reason, but both felt too different from FLStudio for me to spend the time learning when my musical abilities are the things holding me back, and not the software. I really liked AL, but it seemed a bit more limited than FLStudio, but that could've been because I didn't know what I was doing very well.

Pro-quality, community driven composition software at a bargain price. VSTs, samples, and MIDI all laid out in a logical tracker-style environment. Also, the demo isn't crippled!

I could never get the hang of any complex music software until Renoise came along. It's a little intimidating since it's not a sequencer, but once you 'get' the basics of a tracker it's very fluid and intuitive.

What do you mean by sound better? There's a lot you can do just by getting a couple good VST instruments, or even just messing with the ones that come with FL. IIRC you can look them up in the help file and it will tell you what kind of synthesis it uses (additive, subtractive, FM, etc) and then you can research that type of synthesizer to find out how to make it do cool stuff.

Do you use any effects on your tracks or are they dry? What kind of music do you make?

What do you mean by sound better? There's a lot you can do just by getting a couple good VST instruments, or even just messing with the ones that come with FL. IIRC you can look them up in the help file and it will tell you what kind of synthesis it uses (additive, subtractive, FM, etc) and then you can research that type of synthesizer to find out how to make it do cool stuff.

Do you use any effects on your tracks or are they dry? What kind of music do you make?

I'll just post these three in here since I've had quite a few people offering advice and help (thanks folks!)

I'm trying to make some basic techno stuff for now since it seems simple enough. With the 2nd track, I used a MIDI for the notes, and on the 3rd, I used a premade trance loop sort of thing.

Eggy suggests I get some better sound and other than that, it's just a matter of improving myself. Someone else suggested different plugins than the basics that come with FL, and probably a few other tips I'm forgetting at the moment.

I think what I need to learn to use better are FX, although I'm not sure which I should be using and how to tweak them to get the sound I want.

I just got Ableton Live 6, and I am loving it. It is basically a million times more versatile than FruityLoops, and can be used for music production as well. It's amazing for sampling and creating soundscapes, and has quite a bit of MIDI controllers, MIDI effects and post-processing for audio samples. I love it.

Something has recently rekindled my desire to get better at creating music, and now I come back with a new challenge for those of you out there who use FLStudio:

I would like someone to help me create a basic song of sorts that I can pick apart in hopes of learning: the ones that come with FL generally seem way too advanced for someone of my level.

Hit me up on AIM, PM, or in this thread if you'd like to help or want some more details on the current type of music I want to make.

Mods, feel free to move this to H/A still if you don't want it in here.

I don't mean to offend you at all, but the songs that come with the latest version of fruity range from "My first drum loop lawls" to "I can finally wipe my own....oh nevermind "

So what I think might be helpful for you is to actually disect some of those songs a little more if you really find them that daunting. Also, alot of the "Cool Stuff" is actually just cool tricks FL can do and are just being demonstrated, and aren't neccessarily the best way to go about achieving said effect.

I've been working with DAWs of all kinds for over a decade, including Logic, FL, Cubase and Reason. While each program has it's pros and cons, the one thing that is universal between them would be the science behind the engineering.

What I'm really wondering now is whether you need help with the engineering side, or the song-writing side. Perhaps you have some examples you'd be willing to share either via PM or in the thread. Then maybe we could start real discussion once we've focused on the problem.

Well the beat changes several times.
For most of the song (except the intro), it's a hard trance or gabber beat. These beats are generally just a distorted kick drum. But if you don't have alot of experience with controlling distortion, it can be tricky. Here's a fruity-centric tutorial on creating gabber kicks, which seems to look ok to mehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Q_V-5VHIY&feature=related
Also check the related vids.

If you're talking about the beginning of the song, there'd be two ways to do it.
The first, which would require you to find a break that has similiar hits in it that you could slice up and resequence. This would require a beat slicing program such as ReCycle, which is worth it's weight in gold and then some. (Easily the most used software in my studio)

The second would entail finding hits that sound close to the ones in the break in the beginning of the song, and sequencing out that beat. Trust me, if you want decent results you wanna go with option one. The reason being that by slicing up beats played by a real drummer, it's infinitely easier to get a beat you're looking for that sounds natural as opposed to the often robotic sounding results of sequencing by hand. Even using tricks like the humanize function, and expert tweaking of velocity, pan, and delay by hand, it's often more trying than it's worth to achieve your sound (if not damn near impossible)

If you want a great repository of free samples (and knowledge), you should check out the DogsOnAcid board "The Grid" http://www.dogsonacid.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=4 Specifically the threads of interest sticky. It's a DnB focused board mainly, which tends to be over-engineered music void of musical theory. It's a great place to glean knowledge which can be applied to any kind of music. The search function is key, but requires a sign-up.

There's also a pretty smart community for FLStudio, quick google searches yield great results. Also, don't underestimate youtube for answers to your questions and general knowledge tutorials.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but I suppose you're options would be to either slow the tempo of what you have in FL or re-input whatever the MIDI file contains. I've never used FL Studio, but if you really want to get in to making some real cool stuff you should look in to using Reason. If you're pretty comfortable with FL Studio, then maybe some kind of sample library would benefit you the most to get better sounds. Also, you should get some kind of keyboard. Any keyboard will do, as long as it has MIDI out. You can then get a cheap USB MIDI interface and use that as your master controller in FL.

I used to use Acid and Fruity Loops in combination. In fact I used to record all of my songs that way. I'd make beats and synths in Fruity Loops, and then export them out and arrange the loops in Acid and add any real instrumentation.

Yeah, I'd like to try to get something like that youtube link I posted a bit back going.. gabber/hardstyle, not sure what the exact genre is.

Well, if that's all you're trying to go for, the things included with flstudio should do you decently enough. Right now I'd suggest getting familiar with the distortion and overdrive effects included with flstudio, because nearly every damn thing is distorted in hard house.

Keep in mind that many times you'll have to use a filter to make the distortion listenable in any way.

I think it'd be good advice right now to ignore everyone telling you to learn a different program. While there are definite advantages to using Reason, Acid, and FL together, there are nearly none to switching gears now and learning something else. At this point, you're still trying to get your head around even the most basic concepts, and trying to learn the same thing in more than one environment is just going to set you back.

Besides, the difference between Reason and Fruity is really going to just come down to personal preference, as I don't really consider either to be the end-all to DAWs and are really just stepping stones to something bigger. Not to say it isn't possible to create professional quality tunes in either, it really is. It's just that once you get to that level you may find yourself craving something with a little more umph.

I too started out pumping out loops and synth samples with fruity and reason, then sequencing them in Acid. Acid makes laying out your final track so much easier than in either of those proggies. Now I've consolidated all that into Logic.

As for VSTs, they are definitely a good idea. The ones bundled with FLstudio (sytrus), are quite powerful once you get beyond presets, but I highly recommend Absynth and most of the other Native Instrument ones. Of course, these cost money, so I recommend researching them now and then once you find that maybe some of their features will start to make your life easier, you can begin saving up some cash.

Since it has been awhile since I've used fruity, I'm not sure if there is a function that will slow your midi track down. You might try loading the midi-track into the slicer, or perhaps there's an option in the Import > Midi option. I do know there are 3rd party programs that do this.

I mostly use Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (the last version of that name before it became Adobe Audition, which I've never bothered to figure out.)

Now, if I did a lot of midi stuff, I would need something else, such as Pro Tools LE, Logic Pro, or something like that, but since I mostly just record "live" instruments or mix audio tracks others have recorded for me, CEP 2.1 works for me.

Some people have made kickass music using free tracking software (as in, modfiles, that sort of thing) while others only need one mic and some way to capture that on the computer, so they can record a guitar or piano, then their voice.

Honestly? I've never tried that, but it does look simple compared to the rest of the crazy shit poster here so far.

I fucking love GarageBand. Whether you're sequencing MIDI, recording live instruments, mixing the two, creating a beat with canned loops, making your own loops or even just throwing together some sounds in a multitrack environment, I've never used a program with this much power that's so easy to use. The only real shame is that it's part of iLife, so it's Mac only with no prayer of a port unless Apple seriously shifts their business model.

So yeah, if you own a Mac or even have access to one. Try it out. It's pretty great.

I mostly use Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (the last version of that name before it became Adobe Audition, which I've never bothered to figure out.)

Now, if I did a lot of midi stuff, I would need something else, such as Pro Tools LE, Logic Pro, or something like that, but since I mostly just record "live" instruments or mix audio tracks others have recorded for me, CEP 2.1 works for me.

Some people have made kickass music using free tracking software (as in, modfiles, that sort of thing) while others only need one mic and some way to capture that on the computer, so they can record a guitar or piano, then their voice.

This is true. I was suddenly reminded that I made this in ModPlug Tracker. But then again I did this in Fruity Loops 3 (although last version I used was FLStudio 4). So yeah, it really comes down to knowing what you want to do and then knowing the software you're working with.

FLStudio is a good piece of software on its own. Remember that you can layer patterns so you can have different sections of a beat, or different beats that are meant to go together, on different patterns and layer them together easily. Give your song distinct sections (in other words come up with a progression) instead of just building in instruments (which was my mistake when I first started making electronic music, although I don't make much of it at all anymore).

Also, if you would like I can post an IT file for the first song and the FLP sequence file for the Fruity Loops track, although I guess I can't guarantee we have the same samples, or that you'll even have much luck opening it on that one.

Unfortunately I'm on Linux now, so I can't help you much beyond that unless you have Hydrogren Drum Machine (which is free), which is fairly similar and is still good for learning the fundamentals of beat construction.

The thing to be aware of is that most songs have more layers of instrumentation than you might imagine, at least including the basics: Beat, Bass Line, Rhythm Line, Lead Line.